Last week, on one of my critical incident trauma calls I experienced a miracle. I was informed that an electrician had been electrocuted. I was debriefing his coworkers and to my surprise and delight the electrician not only survived but he attended the debriefing to thank his fellow coworkers for saving his life. This was a God moment for me where the gratitude of this survivor brought his coworkers closer together with a firm commitment to be more diligent and safe doing their dangerous work.
Sadly, in the same week I was deployed to provide grief support to a different employer whose regional manager suffered a heart attack and died while out of town with his coworkers at a conference. One coworker who was friends with the manager shared he made the call to tell the spouse what had happened. It was hardest thing he ever had to do. What do you say at this tragic moment of loss?
I remember sitting with this coworker as he shared how this spouse shared the sense of isolation she felt. Everything in the world seemed absurdly trivial in the face of her loss, and she experienced a profound sense of separation. She told him with no small amount of bitterness, “People tell me they know how I feel. Well, they don’t.”
Isn’t that the truth?
When we experience a serious, life-changing loss the whole world seems to slip away from us. We enter some kind of invisible bubble from whose interior we can see the rest of the world and all the people in it, but we no longer feel any sense of connection to it or them. Grief and pain isolate. And it’s not just our own feelings, but the rest of the world tends to sneak softly away from our suffering. What do you say to someone who has just been diagnosed with cancer? How do you approach a couple whose child just committed suicide? Is there a proper way to comfort my senior neighbor who had fallen out of her bed and taken to the hospital and then transferred to a nursing home to perhaps never to return to her home.
The anguish felt by the woman in the gospel story may not be only the orthopedic ailment which has crippled her for years. It might also be the awful sense of “otherness”—a sense of not being part of a community. It’s significant, I think, that this unnamed woman did not approach Jesus. Rather, Jesus saw her, knew she was suffering, and called out to her. He broke through that invisible bubble which kept her at a distance from those who understood illness and infirmity only as God’s punishments for some kind of disobedience.
I can’t help but wonder what the woman was feeling when she came to the synagogue. She certainly didn’t come seeking or expecting the guest rabbi from Nazareth to make her ailing back straight again. Did she come just to be in the presence of the sacred, to hear the words of comfort from the scrolls? Did she stand in the rear, not mixing with the other women, keeping her eyes on the ground, accepting that her infirmity was her permanent burden to bear for her sins?
The work Jesus performed on this particular Sabbath was a work of restoration. By restoring this woman to wholeness, Jesus restored her to the community. She was able—and quite joyful—to enter into the praise of God with all the others who had come to that holy place of worship. Jesus was quite clear that the disability which had afflicted this poor lady for eighteen years was not a sign of God’s frowning judgment. He went on to call her a “daughter of Abraham”—further establishing her as one of the family, re-connecting her, and breaking the bubble of suffering which had made her a pariah.
Let me share something very profound and the real reason to come to church this Sunday. This is the joyful blessing of the Sabbath. It’s the ability to gather as community. I must confess that, in the pre-COVID-19 days, I thought the internet would be a wonderful a tool for the Gospel. I knew a priest who bragged that he had 22 million followers on the internet watching him. But he was wrong. There is absolutely nothing to substitute being in the company of your church family on the Sabbath. Our need for warm, interpersonal contact is both nourishing and healing. Yes, there are those who fear betraying their emotions in the sacred space. Perhaps they worry that their anxieties, fears, or griefs will intrude on the devotion of their fellow congregants. I say if such frailties are not excused and embraced by a Christian community that community isn’t doing its job. We don’t always have to know how to approach a hurting brother or sister. We’ll do 90% of our care by simply showing up.
I agree with that spouse whose husband died suddenly at his company’s conference. Many will claim they understand when they really don’t. You don’t need to understand someone in order to love them. We can all do that. And whenever we gather for Sabbath worship, we can look to the one on the cross. He understands us all.
Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends and I truly appreciate you for taking the time to read my blog and praying for the 60 people on our prayer list. You don’t know them and you don’t understand the hurt and isolation they feel with their illness, but your willingness to pray for them is good enough. Please remember the Sabbath day and be in the company of your Christian family. They need you.
